There are many ways to help get your site higher in the search engine results, but perhaps 3 of the most overlooked are 3 of the easiest.
1. The Alt Attribute
There's really nothing special about the Alt attribute other than it gives you a great opportunity to place another reference to those targeted keywords on your page.
The Alt attribute does not function on it's own; it is contained within the HTML <IMG> tag. The idea behind the Alt attribute is that when the image does not display, the information in the Alt attribute will be displayed in it's place. With most web browsers, the Alt text (as the actual text within the Alt attribute is called) is displayed when the image is hovered over with the mouse. Visually impaired web surfers will also be served the Alt text in their readers.
Acceptable Usage of the Alt Attribute for SEO
The Alt attribute can help your website to gain rank in the search engines, but it can also hurt your site if you abuse it. The following examples are some unacceptable Alt text implementations:
<img src="searching.jpg" alt="SEO, web programming, search engine optimization, address bar, surfing the web">
<img src="code.jpg" alt="programming, web programming, HTML, CSS, Java, websites">
Besides risking a penalty for keyword stuffing, using alt text like the examples above just plain look bad and can detract from your online reputation.The following does not work if you are using FireFox as FireFox does not show Alt text or images that fail to load.Hover over the picture below to see how bad this looks to site visitors.Hover over the image and if you are not using FireFox you would see the alt text laundry list of keywords.
It looks even worse when the picture fails to load.
You should see either the alt text alone, or the symbol for a broken picture along with the alt text.
